Negreanu posts monster numbers, Bencb makes final 9 of WSOP Online Main Event

Daniel Negreanu enjoyed a deep run in the 2024 WSOP Online Main Event but fell short of the big money, exiting in 128th when he jammed his last 8BBs with . Vlad Dubanov re-jammed from the hijack and showed . The run-out gave stream fans a sweat on the river, but it was game over when Negreanu finally peeled the . 

Negreanu's Day 2: A tale of big pairs

Negreanu could have been out early on when he picked up in the big blind and decided to trap against a UTG raise from 'G Zisimopoulos'.  The flop came down and Negreanu check-raised a 2BB bet to 5.5BBs and got a call. He bet the turn and Zisimopoulos called again. Negreanu slowed down on the river, announcing his intent to check-call. Zisimopoulos checked behind and showed aces.

“Oh my god, how good are we?” Negreanu said. “How f*****g good are we? Every single other f*****g player in this tournament would be gone. We just ran kings into aces off 40 big blinds. We lost one pre, six on the flop, seven on the turn, and we’ve still got 29. How you like me now?”

Negreanu got aces straight after but couldn’t get anyone to engage with his min raise: “That’s a little annoying, more annoying probably than losing the kings to the aces.”

Negreanu celebrates after hitting a 90BB stack with kings vs. twos

Then things picked up. He won a big pot with A-J against A-3 and then picked up kings again. This time, the outcome was better. After a raise from the cut-off, 'Naaatutally' moved all-in for 20BBs and Negreanu re-shipped. He was up against jacks and faded a flush draw on the river. 

And it was kings again shortly after, this time going up against 'LappyPoker’s' twos. That put Negreanu up over 90 big blinds with a stack of 1.5M – “big freaking pimping,” as Negreanu described it. “Wooooh baby!”

Aces bring the pain

Negreanu maintained a decent stack until he picked up aces again and the wheels came off. 

There were 163 players left when he three-bet 'JungMoney' with from the cut-off. 'JungMoney' shipped his remaining 23BBs and Negreanu called to see he was in brilliant shape, up against .

Daniel Negreanu peeled the river and got the bad news.

The flop was not the one Negreanu wanted to see. He faded the club on the turn but the dropped on the river and Negreanu slammed the table in frustration. Winning that pot would have seen him on a big stack of 83BBs, double the average. Instead, he was cut down to less than 30BBs and he couldn't find another spin-up. 

He cashed for $24,977 but that's only half the story. 

Monster streaming numbers

The other is the monster numbers that Negreanu posted across his various live streams. 

The GGPoker ambassador doesn't stream a lot, but when he does he gets a lot of eyeballs. 

You can see the combined numbers on this X post from poker agent Brian Balsbaugh. Negreanu had an average of 33,112 viewers and a maximum of 47,897. X was the most popular streaming platform, followed by YouTube, Twitch and Facebook. Combined 'watched minutes' totalled a monster 10,463,392. 

It's not just his star power that commands the views. Negreanu balances an effortless mix of strategy, interaction with his chat and insight into his life, creating a stream that's always entertaining and informative. That he doesn't do it much makes it that much more special. 

Final table set in WSOP Main Event 

The Negreanu fans might have left disappointed this time, but the tournament continued – without their man but with serious life-changing money up top. 

Six players would win over $1 million. One would scoop an incredible $4,021,012.

Other notables who fell short after Negreanu was railed included Felipe Ramos (120th), Bryn Kenney (110th), Daniel Smiljkovic (57th), Jack Salter (48th), Sergi Reixach (46th), David Peters (38th) and Sergio Aido (23rd). Brazilian Levistraus was the final table bubble boy and he picked up $291,860 for 10th place. That's some consolation for missing out on a +$200K pay jump to ninth. 

The tournament paused at that point, with the final nine set and everyone guaranteed $502,771. One thing you can say about GGPoker is that it knows how to deliver huge numbers. Its $25M guarantee was smashed with a total $29,1930,500 prize pool. 

Isaac Baron made the final table of the WSOP Online Main Event and will be playing for $4 million tonight

Joe Giron

Over half of that ($15,872,359) will be won tonight when the final nine play down to the WSOP Online Main Event champion. You can watch all of the action, cards-up, on GGPoker's YouTube channel, starting at 6pm UTC. 

Evgenii Akimov is the chip leader with 86.4BBs, Benjamin Rolle, aka Bencb, is bringing up the rear with 14.3BBs and Isaac Baron is in the middle of the pack with 33.8BBs. Bencb, the founder of the Raise Your Edge training site, will play the heel for many tonight after his controversial comments about women in poker earlier this year. 

WSOP Online Main Event final table

^{Additional image courtesy of WPT/Joe Giron.}